Our night in the ER

As some of you might know already, Joel and I got to spend a wonderful night in the ER with Phil, here are the details.

I had just finished giving Phillip his Bath and was letting him run around "all natural" while I talked on the Phone. I heard him getting into something so I checked on him to discover that her had found a bottle of iron pills and had dumped them all over. Phillip is very quick to put things in his mouth so I quickly checked and saw that his mouth was green (the pills are green). Knowing that Iron can be toxic I called for Joel and we tried to get him to throw them up, but he did not, we did not have any ipecac on hand and and neither did Melissa, we resorted to call Poison control. As we could not tell how many Phil had swallowed, and I did not know how many were in the jar to begin with, Poison control told us to go to the ER. Joel and I figure they will probably pump his stomach and let us go home.

We get to the ER a little after 8pm and are ushered right back to an Exam room, (thank the lord no waiting in an infected waiting room). We are quickly seen by a nurse and doctor, who quickly tell us that they need to monitor Phil's iron levels. This would include a blood draw now and another in 6 hours. If the initial blood draw came back high they would have to admit him. Getting a toddler to sit still at any given moment his hard enough, getting them to sit still while sticking them with a needle is almost impossible. It took me holding him on my lap, Joel holding his one arm and entertaining him, and another Nurse holding the arm being stuck, and a tech drawing the blood to do this. I don't know who had the hardest time with this Phil or me. They also took an X-ray of his tummy to see if they could see any pills. This was a much easier task than the blood draw. At about 10pm they came in and told us his Iron was high so they we going to admit him for observation. They just needed to wait to hear from him Primary care doctor to get the final order.

At the point where they tell us they are going to admit Phil it is about 2 hours past his bedtime and we can tell he is getting tired, so are anxious to get him upstairs and into a crib. Now when Joel and I initially walked into the exam room we had both decided in our heads that Phil was not going walk around, he could sit on the bed, or chair or be held in our arms. This decision didn't last long. As Phil being a) an active toddler b) not feeling sick c) very tired, therefore, doesn't have to listen to adults talk about germs and d) there are to many interesting things in the the ER that he can't not touch. So our tired selves caved in some respect, allowing him to walk around our exam area and up too the nurses station, sometimes while pushing a stool on casters. We used up 3 gloves making turkeys and exhausted the toys we brought and the stickers provided by the ER. Joel and I took turns pacing the exam area around the nurses station hoping that he would nod off. But every turn brought something Phil had not seen or heard and he would perk right up. All the while Phil would do the sign for "car" and wave bye-bye, He wanted to go home so badly and so did we. I am convinced that this task of getting him to sleep would have been easier if we had just brought quackers and his blankie. Joel didn't want to bring them and exposed them to germs, So we brought lesser favorite blanket and puppy, but these did not help him go to sleep.

Finally at 12:30 after many tears from Phil and a few from Mom, they took us up to Pediatric floor. I thought "OK he'll just lay down he is so tired". So wrong, they had to hook him up to a lot of monitors and wires (no IV though) and he just screamed. Phil finally fell asleep 1am. Unfortunately they had to come in and take another blood draw at 2am. We tried not to wake him up, but Phil woke up screaming, with three people holding him down and a nurse sticking him with a needle. Poor little Guy just wanted his Mama to hold him, but we knew with all the wire we couldn't take him out. Fortunately, he went back to sleep rather easily.

Now Joel and I could go back to sleep. The pediatric rooms are equipped with couch like benches that are long enough to stretch out on. So Joel and I were able to nod off a little bit. Phil woke up at 4 am and I was able to get him to go back to sleep, with help from some cartoons. I got a few a hours of sleep from 5am til 7:30. Phillip woke up at 7:30 and the Nurse came in and told us that Phil's second blood draw revealed that the iron count had gone down. This was a relief, all we had to do was wait for the Doctor to come in a release us. The Doctor came in shortly after and told us everything looked fine and we could go home. Soon after the nurse came in with some breakfast and our discharge orders and we were on our way home by 8am.

The rest of the day Phil caught up on some much needed sleep. As well as Mom and Dad. After a day of rest Phillip is back to his old self.